Question

What are the determinants of population growth? How does high population growth impact economic development and poverty? What is your prediction for global population and what policies do you recommend to stabilize population?

Answer 1

Historically, high fertility rates have been strongly correlated with deprivation, high infant mortality rates, low women's status and educational levels, inequalities in reproductive health services, and insufficient quality and contraceptive acceptance. In general, declining fertility rates and demographic change was correlated with improved living standards such as increased per capita incomes, increased life expectancy, decreased infant mortality, increased adult literacy, and higher female education and employment rates.

The value placed on large families (especially underprivileged rural populations in less developed countries that benefit least from the development process), the guarantee of protection for the elderly, women's ability to control reproduction, and the role and rights of women in families and societies are important cultural factors affecting family size and demand

Even with demand for family planning services, sufficient access to and provision of family planning and other reproductive health services is necessary to encourage a slowdown in population growth. In addition, access to education and women's ability to determine their own economic security often impact their reproductive choices.

Rapid population growth is likely to reduce the growth and well-being per capita of workers, which tends to increase deprivation. Second, rapid population growth raises landlessness and hence the incidence of poverty in densely populated poor nations with land pressure. Finally, the adverse effects of rapid population growth on child health and probably on education in the next generation are likely to increase poverty. While the direction of the influence of these ties is reasonably clear, it is unclear whether they have a (conventionally measured) quantitatively significant impact on poverty. Nonetheless, what is apparent is that poverty reduction is most likely to occur by direct interventions. Constraining population growth is an indirect policy that is unlikely to have a particularly large independent effect in the short run on poverty reduction, particularly with regard to a host of alternative policies to alleviate poverty.

Shifting to smaller families brings generous returns from the economy. For example, in Bangladesh, researchers found that government spending $62 to avoid an unwanted birth saved $615 in spending on other social services. Investing in reproductive health and family planning programs leaves more tax revenue per child for education and health care, thus accelerating poverty eradication

This carries with it what economists call the demographic incentive to help countries that want to limit their population growth. As countries move quickly to smaller families, the number of young dependents growing— those who need to be nurtured and educated— declines relative to the number of working adults. Productivity is growing in this scenario, savings and investment are increasing, and economic growth is accelerating.